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The year was 931 and I had just grown old enough to both understand the weight of the situation and to flee. This story is not only of me, but of my people.
I was not much older than a young one when the siefek appeared. I was born just after the Reign of Bitis had come to a close. We were a Remnant at the time of my birth and our land was receding. We had been sequestered to the far northeast of The Blade. Sometime in my second decade our Remnant had managed to find somewhat of a peace, contained to a handful of planet-stars. We subsisted and survived – this became the reality of my life by the time I was near twenty years of age.
Throughout 920 we had heard rumors of these sick Sha’an appearing around The Blade. Word would get out that a sick one – a siefek as they came to be called – had appeared in a community we knew or on a planet-star, and we heard naught from them after. We surmised they were not to be trusted. When one appeared on a neighboring planet-star that was part of our Remnant, we swept our forces back to a single community. Swiftly, an entire Remnant of Sha’an filled a tower, then two. By the time our handful of planet-stars was in one place, we had filled the five largest dwellings on our home of Alekodst. Our Achran, the one in the mask had one last hope for us — a floating continent given to us by a Poria head of state when we were the Reign of Bitis still. Some of were able to seek shelter on this continent as it could be positioned close enough to the towers to allow for travel back and forth and moved for safety. We were never sure of how the siefek appeared on Alekodst, but they could not reach the continent in air.
The siefek themselves were the concern at hand. The first that appeared followed the description that came with the rumors. It appeared as a sickly, distorted Sha’an. Its fur was missing in patches, its snout was bent – a more accurate description would be that the snout itself was dented causing some teeth to poke out at odd and impossible angles, the eyes never looked in the same direction, it had only one ear, and its gait was disturbing and made me nauseous from almost a kilometer in the air. The ones that followed though were nothing similar. We considered it lucky that we had hauled our communication equipment to the continent – those who enjoyed its safety had the responsibility of maintaining communication with surrounding Remnants. Every day and night, without end for a decade the Reykata would scale our buildings; they would come from the inside and from the outside climbing vertically up the sides of the towers. Our bravest warriors were thinned so over time that I held many patrols over the last years. Occasionally, other Remnants and once a Reign – of Bostaur I believe – came to our aid with supplies. A water purification system that could be run from the continent was perhaps the single reason we lasted stranded in our own homes for a decade.
A decade of attacks until he showed up.